You want a record that still answers, months later, whether a setup is paying and whether you followed it.
Memory is enough on a quiet week. You can name the last few trades on an opening-range setup. You can say whether you waited for the range.
But a busy week lands. After a good week you remember the winners. After a bad week you remember the sting. The story that you tell about that setup doesn't match the entries that you actually took. So you write each trade down the same day, while the chart is still open.
The columns
Then the note grows. You write the idea before the trade, the thoughts during it, the recap after it, the mood of the market, how long it lasted, and the model. That can take 15 to 20 minutes a day. It starts to feel like accounting. You stop because the sheet is too big for a trading day.
So you keep a few columns. The row holds the setup, whether you waited, and the result in R. One short note holds the mistake or the mood. R is the risk on that trade. It is the distance from the entry to the stop, times the size, in money. A full stop is −1R. A trade that makes twice that is +2R.
The row still starts after you have already clicked. A random trade can feel like a plan. So before the session you write three lines: the bias, the levels, and what you are waiting for. Traders who add that note say it keeps them patient.
Then you keep those short rows for a few weeks. Some days the new row looks like the one before it. You can't see a change inside that session. The writing feels like a duty. So you stop. The first days feel lighter. Memory covers the new trades.
But a month later you want to know whether the opening-range idea still pays. The journal ends on the day that you quit. You can recall the winners. You can't list the losses that sat between them. If you start again after an ugly day, the new rows begin on that day. So you write the dull days as well.
Win rate and expectancy
You now have a list. One day still looks like the day before it. A profit number hides the morning that keeps losing. So you read two numbers from the rows.
Win rate is the winning trades divided by the trades that were wins or losses. Expectancy is the total result divided by the number of trades. It is the average result per trade that you logged.
These 5 trades are an example. The missing month has 2 wins of +2R and 3 losses of −1R. The win rate is 40%. The total is +1R. Expectancy is +0.2R per trade. Memory keeps the 2 wins, so the month feels stronger than that.
The same 40% can lose money. If those 3 losses are −2R each, expectancy is −0.4R per trade.
A journal doesn't create the edge. Some traders skip the writing when another check already shows that the edge is still there. The rows are that check. If expectancy is not above 0 after 3 or 4 market cycles, you change the plan.
The rows don't help you if you never read them. So you review once a week, then once a month. The week shows the repeated mistake. The month shows whether the expectancy moved.
Then you second-guess the setups that you didn't take. One trader wrote those down for 3 months. The skipped group would not have made money. So the row also marks taken or skipped.
The list still gets skipped when it lives in another window. So the row sits under the chart that you already have open. That panel is JouView.